How to Compare Previous Version of Excel Spreadsheet– A Diff for Spreadsheet

It’s easy to compare two text files, any diff like program would do the job. But when it comes to compare Spreadsheet, it’s not that easy, especially it’s almost impossible to go through two large spreadsheets side by side to find out the differences manually.

Thankfully, there is this Add-ins for Excel called “Spreadsheet Compare”. As the name suggested, it lets you compare any two spreadsheet and it will highlight the difference and generate a report for you.

This add-in supports Excel version from Office 2000 and above. So if you are still using software that’s been writing in this decay, then it wouldn’t be a problem. When you install, just make sure you pick the version corresponding to the version of your Office.

Once you’re done, you can go to the Add-Ins tab of the Excel and find the Compare from there.

Click Compare will prompt a dialog asking you which two files you wish to compare against.

You can go to Next for more options.

Customize what the highlighting colour looks like.

Pick and choose which Worksheet you want to compare

By default, generate report is disabled, you can enable it and this nice add-on will generate a report for you once its finished.

Here is what it looks like after it has finished comparing the two spreadsheet.

If you have enabled to generate a report, then this will generate a report for the differences found on a separate new spreadsheet.

If you deal with spreadsheet regularly, this is a neat tool to have for compare different version of the same file. Check Spreadsheet Compare out and use it wisely.